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hey welcome back to my channel my name is Katie and this is Katherine xix the channel where we love to talk all things travel and filmmaking today I want to share with you my best tips for planning a trip to a place that you've never been by showing you my process for planning my upcoming trip to Estonia Latvia Finland and Sweden later this month honestly normally I like to be a lot more prepared than this in the past I've planned out trips a lot more in advance than this one but we are leaving in just under two weeks and we don't have Airbnb booked do we have all of our flights booked which is good because kind of nature of our trip is a lot of short flights once we get there going between places but I haven't booked any accommodation I know how I'm gonna do it which I'm gonna share with you later I just haven't yet that being said my first tip for you would be to start planning early I like to be prepared and I think that you know there's only stuff to be gained from preparedness but let's jump into the real tips step one start a Google Doc this may be like a really nerdy tip but when Dan and I plan trips we like to be very organized so we start a Google Doc where we write out our proposed itinerary this is my Google Doc it is full of Airbnb potential places to stay different hostels different activities that we might want to do and it's just day by day what we're gonna do obviously when you're thinking about planning your trip you're gonna have some dates in mind it's great if you could be flexible because then you can choose the dates of your trip based on when the cheapest flights are that's something that we took into consideration when we were looking at our trip and so we're leaving on a Tuesday which is when a lot of flights happen to be less expensive you can also set up flight alerts so that you'll get emails to your phone when the price of the flight is the lowest that it's been my third tip for you when it comes to planning your trip is to do a lot of research I'm the kind of person I maybe am over prepared when I travel but I really want to have a good idea of what is in the place that I'm going to so that I don't miss out on any of the main attraction so the way that I do this is watching YouTube videos literally that's my number one tip for you you can look through Pinterest and blog posts that stuff is useful as well but my favorite thing to do and maybe just because video is my you know preferred medium of creation but just go on YouTube and literally search like Sweden travel vlog or Stockholm travel vlog and I found some really good information in tips by searching that you never know you might find some cool new creators that you want to follow in the future aside from YouTube though there's a cool feature on Google where you can just search literally things to do in Estonia or whatever things to do in Riga Latvia and there's a tab that you can click on google that is all travel suggestions that are kind of curated from different places on the web it's sort of like the destinations version of Google flights something to look into that's probably gonna give you the most like typical tourist destinations which you may not end up wanting to go to but at least you'll know about them because it's important to be informed all right let's go to the balcony it's such a beautiful fall day out it's very bright it's very bright in terms of accommodation when you're traveling I cannot recommend Airbnb enough it's truly the best way I think to stay in a place that's really like integrated into a city and to kind of get to know what it would be like to live there honestly the number one reason why I prefer Airbnb over hotels is that Airbnb almost always have a kitchen one of the best ways to save money while you're traveling is to cook some of your meals because it gets really expensive to eat out for three meals a day my recommendation would be to always eat breakfast at your Airbnb I don't think there's any reason to buy breakfast out then typically what I have done when I've been traveling is have a big meal at lunch that's at a restaurant that you really want to go to because obviously part of traveling is experiencing the local cuisine and then for supper have something that's smaller just like back at your Airbnb so we'll often make like spaghetti or something super easy this usually works out pretty well because for me if I'm leaving the house at like 8:00 a.m. and then I'm out wandering the city seeing stuff going museums whatever all day then by 6 o'clock I'm ready to just go back and chill for a while before leaving and going to see more stuff again so if you can end up only eating out one meal a day rather than three that's gonna save you a lot of money okay here's a golden tip for you this is like probably one of my favorite things to do and I should start sharing them because I think they're super valuable I love to create a personalized google map for whatever city that I'm going to so if you've never heard of this before it's kind of like an obscure Google feature I guess but essentially what you can do is just search Google my maps and then it'll come up you can click on that and then you can create your own customized Google map of destinations so once you have that opened up you couldn't go to a specific area and then just start searching for different places so I'm currently working on one for when we're in Sweden in Stockholm and so the first thing I did was look up Arlanda Airport and label that on the map so I know where the airport is it's way out of stockholm by the way if you're wider it's like so far away then the next thing I look up is like where is the main train station in Stockholm like where is there like Grand Central Station essentially that the airport shuttle goes to and then after that I start looking up mean like attractions that I want to go to where is the Abba museum there's cathedrals and palaces that we want to visit and I start labeling those then once I have a good sense of where all the different attractions we want to see are then I start looking up restaurants in those areas this might not be as common of a thing for everybody to do but when we're traveling especially traveling with Emily I'm always looking for vegan restaurants that I know we can find food that we can eat once we get there especially in different countries you don't always know what the availability of vegan food is going to be so it's good to do some research ahead of time so far from what I've seen there's lots of good options in Stockholm so that's exciting and then I add the restaurants to the map and then that kind of builds for me like a bit of a tour or like we're actually knowing where specifically we're gonna go and then after I've done that then I can kind of pick out different areas of the map of like a day one will go here day two will go there [Music] one of the best things that you can do if you have access to this is reaching out to locals because people who live there are always gonna know the best destinations to hit up while you're traveling in our case it's asking Emily who is currently living in Finland what we're gonna see when we go to Helsinki and she's been to Estonia already so what kind of cool things that you see there so that's a really great resource if you can find that otherwise it's always useful to just put it out on the internet and see if anybody else has travelled to those places and if they can give you suggestions speaking of that if you've been to Sweden Finland Latvia or Estonia let me know in the comments below what things I should see while I'm there overall I think having a successful trip is all about being the right amount of prepared like I was saying before sometimes I think I can maybe over prepare some people prefer more spontaneity when they're traveling but for me the reality is I go on shorter trips I'm not the kind of person that is traveling for months at a time we're gonna see four countries in like 12 days so there are gonna be jam-packed days and I want to make sure that I get the most out of my short time and new place so when you only have a few days to see the highlights of a city that you've never been to I think it's important to do some research ahead of time and figure out what the best things to see and do there are anyway I hope these tips were helpful to you I can't wait to share with you all our travels when we head to the Baltic Sea countries Scandinavia tour that we're doing later this year I'm hoping to continue to just make daily content while I'm there because my favorite travel videos have always been the ones that I like edit while I'm still there I mean the Puerto Rico videos were great but I feel like it kind of lost it to touch when I let it sit for without editing it and my favorite videos are the New York and Montreal travel vlogs so that's the kind of style that I want to do anyway that's gonna be it for me today thanks so much for watching if you found this useful at all make sure to give it a thumbs up again comment below your suggestions for the places that we're going or if you haven't been there let me know cool places that you and your best tips for planning your trip also while you're down there make sure you hit the subscribe button so you don't miss any of my future videos and if you really don't want to miss any of my future videos hit that little Bell icon and you'll get a notification every time I upload by the way it's everyday anyway as always I love you all I hope you're following your dreams and I'll see you the next one bye